What I can tell you in positive land, is that Spring has arrive in Portland. I have a massive cherry tree in my backyard with beautiful pink blossoms. It really is a sight to behold. And I had to mow for the first time since we moved. We left our old gas-powered mower at the house on 33rd, but brought my push mower. We have a good sized yard so it took me an hour or so. It looks great, and I smelled like fresh cut grass and sweat. That’s what Spring is all about. I have yet to tackle the mass of blackberry brambles in the area near the potting shed. Seriously, how do I get rid of those things without killing everything else? I guess time will tell.

But I am plagued by dandelions. Bastards.

I did cut my hair off again. It’s a cute, kind of deconstructed cut that highlights my curls while taking the length off the back of my neck. She took almost 2 hours to cut it, paying attention to how the curls formed and where the bulk was. I love love love this cut. I like my hair long, but it almost felt too “mother earth” or old ladyish. This way I can be all spikey and sassy and fun. Yes, I just wrote a whole paragraph about my hair. There’s some girly left in me.

I went to Tacoma last week to help out my sister. Although she’s still in her 20′s, she developed a hernia. My mother also flew up from Colorado because the day before the surgery was her birthday and my nephew was home all week for Spring Break. There was also my niece at home who is 4, and too young for school just yet. The surgery went well. I have a lovely picture of my sister post-op, stoned out of her gourd. And all was well until a phonecall from my uncle.

Let me walk around the issue to remind people that when I don’t get sleep, I’m very reactionary and illogical. I also do not get along particularly well with this uncle. He’s only 10 years older than me so there is tension from his childhood where he blamed me for my mother leaving him. He’s also the one who has had the most problems in our family with substance abuse and mental illness. But I digress. He just says shit sometimes. So he called my sister’s phone, wanting to make sure she was okay but my BIL answered. My BIL and uncle have never met. The uncle goes on this diatribe about how my sister is his favorite and how he doesn’t particularly care for me because we are too similar or some such bullshit. My mother walked in the door about 10 minutes later from a day of shopping and I called her brother and asshole. Fight ensues. 10 minutes later I’m on I5 heading south, back to Portland and to home. I haven’t spoken to my mother since. What I do realize is that when I am denied sleep, either because the kids are up early, or my mother is walking around the house talking on the phone and letting the back door slam, or because I was getting up to make sure my sister was getting her meds or just freaking alive, things can go wrong. But after talking to David about the whole thing, I don’t regret ending the trip early.

I’m used to telling people that my mother and I are close. It falls off my tongue as easily as my name. And we are close, at a distance. Proximity is not good for the two of us. I don’t think she’s the least bit interested in what I do as a writer, which is fine, I guess. I try to keep up with her busy social and political life. I listen when she talks about the issues with town and her newest projects. But when I talk about my novel, or David’s art projects, her eyes kind of glaze over. For the first time in my life I came to understand how unimportant my writing is to her, and for some reason, that was a physical blow. It feels like she doesn’t really listen to me. So my leaving Tacoma was spurred by the argument, but it was easier to leave for other reasons. Beyond political leanings, we have little in common. And there are some deeper revelations I’ve come to, but this is a public blog and I think that’s enough. Suffice to say, I will graduate in June, and the people who understand what a struggle this has been for me will be proud. My mother will probably also be proud, but because I completed my Master’s, not because I completed my first novel.

On lighter notes, I love Avatar the Last Airbender. We rented the DVDs from Nextflix years ago but kept getting scratched disks. I eventually gave up. But iTunes had the entire first season available, so I downloaded it.

Then the tantrum ensued.

It looked awful. Every time the characters moved there seemed to be artifacting, turning solid lines into some fuzzy mess. I wanted to be okay with it. I do love the series, but not enough to watch it like that. After spending 2 days trying to find the e-mail to contact them, I finally dug up the information. Now, I know Apple wants people to figure out how to do things on their own, but jesushfuckingchrist, make it a little easier to contact customer service please. But once the issue was e-mailed, they refunded my money immediately. We are also using Netflix again, because renting movies from them is much cheaper, and I get to rent entire shows like Weeds and Mad Men. Plus it streams through the Xbox. We watched 88 Minutes last night, and the quality of the stream was great. The movie sucked though.

Our house on 33rd officially belongs to the bank now. We left our Weber grill in the garage and kept meaning to go back and get it. David noticed, while riding by on his bike, the locks had been changed on the garage. On top of that, there are notices on all the windows that the city will convict for trespassing. The house looks like shit, really. The broken tiles on the porch are stacked up (a tripping hazard) and the windows are all foggy and dusty. I almost feel bad for our former landlady – she’s taking a loss on the place, but she really did fuck us by not paying her mortgage. Moral of the story – I don’t feel THAT bad.

The progress on the novel is going well. I still feel like I have too many things to do and not enough time. That’s how life is though, isn’t it? Speaking of my novel…….

• finding that perfect gift that gave me the belly laughs. I can’t wait to give it to her
• realizing that David and I share a brain sometimes, echoing each other’s thoughts. It feels good to be understood.
• getting rid of all the highlighted words in my current section of the novel. The next section’s work begins now.
• turning off the internet so I can focus on my writing.
• walking the beagles and finding out that Pip doesn’t actually know how to stop when he’s going Mach 10.
• socks.
• having my cooking complimented. I put my heart and soul into my food, and it’s good to be appreciated.
• laughing.
• “elegant” hair.
• finding the space in which to forgive myself.
• having my brother in law return from overseas, unscathed.

My date on Friday with the unemployment office and their class to reintroduce us to their website went well, all things considering. It was interesting to see the different kind of people. From the scars and permanent dirt under their fingernails, I recognized a few construction people. One guy wore a shirt emblazoned with an electrical company’s logo. I wondered if he had worked there, or if he bought the shirt second hand. Then there were a few older ladies. I imagined that they were the rock-star admins that had been with a company since its inception, and decades later, had to be let go. A few hipster kids, with their skinny jeans and bored attitudes arrived late. But more than anything, I realized that the faces before me mirrored my own worry. The class facilitator informed us that we were not alone. The reality of this wave of unemployment is that we are going to be amond many, both the employed and the unemployed who are scouring the job boards and want ads for our next job. Many are underemployed, and I feel like that’s worse.  How demoralizing would it be to get up every morning knowing that you are going to a job that won’t pay the bills? I makes me ill.

But I may have a very groovy opportunity on the horizon, news on that later.

Meanwhile, I spent some quality time with my friend Chris and her hubby at Widmer. She not working, by choice, and loving it. We had a lot of laughs, a great time. She doesn’t want me to get a job until after after summer so that we can spend time “getting drunk at the river.” I don’t think I would get much done in terms of my writing, but it is a tempting offer.

Now that Sunday is almost complete, I will punctuate my weekend by cleaning the litter box. I am such a fucking rock star.

Ginny visited our fair city and left on Thursday. I didn’t get to spend as much time with her as I would have liked. Editing got in the way. So did a couple hangovers. For the record – it’s not good to have a pony keg if your glass keeps getting full and Dopplebach is my new favorite beer (BTW, it’s the seasonal ale at the Radio Room). More than anything, I tried to pull longer laughs from moments filled with booze.

I really should stop drinking.

Ginny took a brave step coming out here. It’s inspired me to stop fearing being looked at like an novice in my hunt for a job involving writing. With the help of a dear friend, I may get into some editing for a proper company. No, it’s probably no one you have heard of, but I will market the shit out of them if I am working for/with them. The first challenge is rewriting my resume to focus on my skills, not my employment history. I love the written word. I don’t care if I have to write sonnets on the  street corner, I will continue to work with writing.

By the way, I fucking despise sonnets.

They give me stomach aches.

Brave steps have been taken by those around me. People are losing their jobs, changing their lives, and starting over in  world that was different just 3 years ago. And in different, I mean it’s harder to make your way when there aren’t any jobs and the world economy is taking a dump. David has been battling through feelings of doubt with his career and school choices. I have done the same. There are some out there who are contemplating crazy journeys of self discovery. But I think if we have a little faith in ourselves we can navigate the complex paths  laid out for us, or we have to take comfort in the progress made by cutting new roads out of a forest of impossibility.

Regardless, I feel a little emotional right now, so I am going to go have a cup of coffee and get this resume off my desk.

While talking with Ginny, I realized I could never go home again.

Home is here in Portland, but the intensity of those experiences cannot be duplicated. I’m more isolated here. I don’t have school as a jumping off point. I can’t seem to keep a job with people who share my ideas (although I have met some really amazing people).  But I can keep trying.

I am so far removed from who I was the day I graduated. But a huge part of that woman – sweaty, nervous, slightly befuddled that she’d actually made it, is still in me. So I don’t have that anchor of school to root me into place, giving me an easy identity. I must make my own. That’s the harder part. Right now, without a job, I have to define who I am. No matter how much I write, the idea of calling myself an “author” is terrifying. I am only slightly comfortable calling myself a writer. But that’s what I’m doing right now – writing and editing.

This post has become a little meandering in its meaning, but I guess what I really mean is – I’m very glad Ginny and Amanda and I have been able to hang out. I’m glad I experienced a Masskrug, and a housewarming party. I’m thrilled at the thought of one more afternoon talking about our lives, but right now, with Ginny on the train to Seattle, and me with a dark office, and the uneven cadence of falling rain – I must be a writer, because if I take stock, that’s really what I have been all along.